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Is free speech under attack in Europe? Roberta Metsola weighs in
“There is a sort of doubt about freedom of expression here or protection of free speech in Europe,” says Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament.
Speaking at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, she addresses Europe’s fractured political landscape. She highlights voter demands for leaders to “act faster and with determination” in defending free speech while admitting that “Europe has not shown enough self-confidence, and these last few days have laid it bare.” As debates on democracy, censorship, and leadership intensify, Metsola reaffirms that European values remain strong. She draws a powerful parallel to Europe’s past struggles under the Iron Curtain, reminding the world that Europeans have fought for and won their freedoms before—and can do so again.
Watch the full conversation: Is the Europe-US rift leaving us all vulnerable?
This conversation is presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft from the 2025 Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world.
The X account of Elon Musk in seen blocked on a mobile screen in this illustration after Brazil's telecommunications regulator suspended access to Elon Musk's X social network in the country to comply with an order from a judge who has been locked in a months-long feud with the billionaire investor, Sao Paulo, Brazil taken August 31, 2024.
Brazil vs. Musk: Now in low Earth orbit
The battle between Brazil and Elon Musk has now reached the stars — or the Starlink, at least — as the billionaire’s satellite internet provider refuses orders from Brazil’s telecom regulator to cut access to X.
The background: Brazil’s Supreme Court last week ordered all internet providers in Latin America’s largest economy to cut access to X amid a broader clash with the company over an order to suspend accounts that the court says spread hate speech and disinformation.
That order came after X racked up some $3 million in related fines, which Brazil has now tried to collect by freezing the local assets of Starlink, a separate company from X.
Starlink says it won’t comply with the order to block X until those assets are unfrozen and has offered Brazilians free internet service while the dispute continues.
Brazil is one of X’s largest markets, with about 40 million monthly users. But both sides have dug in as this becomes a high-profile battle over free speech vs. national sovereignty.
What’s next? It’s hard for the Brazilian government to stop Starlink signals from reaching users, but it could shutter about two dozen ground stations in the country that are part of the company’s network …Founder and CEO of Telegram Pavel Durov delivers a keynote speech during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 23, 2016.
Opinion: Pavel Durov, Mark Zuckerberg, and a child in a dungeon
Perhaps you have heard of the city of Omelas. It is a seaside paradise. Everyone there lives in bliss. There are churches but no priests. Sex and beer are readily available but consumed only in moderation. There are carnivals and horse races. Beautiful children play flutes in the streets.
But Omelas, the creation of science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, has an open secret: There is a dungeon in one of the houses, and inside it is a starving, abused child who lives in its own excrement. Everyone in Omelas knows about the child, who will never be freed from captivity. The unusual, utopian happiness of Omelas, we learn, depends entirely on the misery of this child.
That’s not the end of the tale of Omelas, which I’ll return to later. But the story's point is that it asks us to think about the prices we’re willing to pay for the kinds of worlds we want. And that’s why it’s a story that, this week at least, has a lot to do with the internet and free speech.
On Saturday, French police arrested Pavel Durov, the Russian-born CEO of Telegram, at an airport near Paris.
Telegram is a Wild West sort of messaging platform, known for lax moderation, shady characters, and an openness to dissidents from authoritarian societies. It’s where close to one billion people can go to chat with family in Belarus, hang out with Hamas, buy weapons, plot Vladimir Putin’s downfall, or watch videos of Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov shooting machine guns at various rocks and trees.
After holding Durov for three days, a French court charged him on Wednesday with a six-count rap sheet and released him on $6 million bail. French authorities say Durov refused to cooperate with investigations of groups that were using Telegram to violate European laws: money laundering, trafficking, and child sexual abuse offenses. Specifically, they say, Telegram refused to honor legally obtained warrants.
A chorus of free speech advocates has rushed to his defense. Chief among them is Elon Musk, who responded to Durov’s arrest by suggesting that, within a decade, Europeans will be executed for merely liking the wrong memes. Musk himself is in Brussels’ crosshairs over whether X moderates content in line with (potentially subjective) hate speech laws.
Somewhat less convincingly, the Kremlin – the seat of power in a country where critics of the government often wind up in jail, in exile, or in a pine box – raised the alarm about Durov’s arrest, citing it as an assault on freedom of speech.
I have no way of knowing whether the charges against Durov have merit. That will be up to the French courts to prove. And it is doubtless true that Telegram provides a real free speech space in some truly rotten authoritarian societies (I won’t believe the rumors of Durov’s collusion with the Kremlin until they are backed by something more than the accident of his birthplace.)
But based on what we do know so far, the free speech defense of Durov comes from a real-world kind of Omelas.
Even the most ferocious free speech advocates understand that there are reasonable limitations. Musk himself has said X will take down any content that is “illegal.”
Maybe some laws are faulty or stupid. Perhaps hate speech restrictions really are too subjective in Europe. But if you live in a world where the value of free speech on a platform like Telegram is so high that it should be functionally immune from laws that govern, say, child abuse, then you are picking a certain kind of Omelas that, as it happens, looks very similar to Le Guin’s. A child may pay the price for the utopia that you want.
But at the same time, there’s another Omelas to consider.
On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Congress in which he admitted that during the pandemic, he had bowed to pressure from the Biden administration to suppress certain voices who dissented from the official COVID messaging.
Zuck said he regretted doing so – the sense being that the banned content wasn’t, in hindsight, really worth banning – and that his company would speak out “more forcefully” against government pressure next time.
Just to reiterate what he says happened: The head of the world’s most powerful government got the head of the world’s most powerful social media company to suppress certain voices that, in hindsight, shouldn’t have been suppressed. You do not have to be part of the Free Speech Absolutist Club™ to be alarmed by that.
It’s fair to say, look, we didn’t know then what we later learned about a whole range of pandemic policies on masking, lockdowns, school closures, vaccine efficacy, and so on. And there were plenty of absolutely psychotic and dangerous ideas floating around, to be sure.
What’s more, there are plenty of real problems with social media, hate, and violence – the velocity of bad or destructive information is immense, and the profit incentives behind echo-chambering turn the marketplace of ideas into something more like a food court of unchecked grievances.
But in a world where the only way we know how to find the best answers is to inquire and critique, governments calling audibles on what social media sites can and can’t post is a road to a dark place. It’s another kind of Omelas – a utopia of officially sanitized “truths,” where a person with a different idea about what’s happening may find themselves locked away.
At the end of Le Guin’s story, by the way, something curious happens. A small number of people make a dangerous choice. Rather than live in a society where utopia is built on a singular misery, they simply leave.
Unfortunately, we don’t have this option. We are stuck here.
So what’s the right balance between speech and security that won’t leave anyone in a dungeon?
FILE PHOTO: The International Criminal Court building is seen in The Hague, Netherlands, January 16, 2019.
Hard Numbers: ICC Sanctions, Legislative deadlock, Fading free speech, Attacks on health workers, Mexico campaign tragedy
37: At least 37 members of the House of Representatives are co-sponsoring a bill that would sanction prosecutors and staff at the International Criminal Court involved in applying for arrest warrants against senior Israeli leaders. The bill was introduced by a Republican member, but the Biden administration has expressed support. The president called the warrant applications “outrageous,” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised to work with Congress on the issue.
0.37: If the above bill does pass, it would be remarkable because just 0.37% of all the bills introduced in the 118th Congress have become laws. That passage rate is the lowest since the 1990-1991 Congress, during which Newt Gingrich executed his first government shutdown.
53: A sharp rise in restrictions on free speech and expression globally left 53% of all humans unable to speak freely last year, up from 34% in 2022, according to Article 19, an advocacy group. The big culprits? Crackdowns in India, home to the world’s largest population, and a deterioration of freedoms in Ethiopia, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mongolia. It’s not all bad news though: Article 19 specifically praised Brazil’s progress on freedom of expression after former President Jair Bolsonaro left power.
2,500: Researchers at Safeguarding Health in Conflict, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, recorded over 2,500 attacks on healthcare workers who struggled to look after patients in conflict zones in 2023, a 25% increase from 2022. Researchers attributed the jump to new wars in Gaza and Sudan while older wars in places like Ukraine and Myanmar continue unabated.
9: A stage at a campaign rally collapsed in high winds in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, last night, killing at least nine people, including a child. Scores more were injured at the event featuring presidential long-shot candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez. The country is in campaign mode ahead of the June 2 presidential, state, and municipal elections. Máynez has suspended upcoming events in response to the tragedy.
Flags from across the divide wave in the air over protests at Columbia University on Thursday, April 25, 2024.
Slogans of war
Where do we draw the line between free speech and a safe space? That’s the core question posed by the protests and the arrests raging on campuses right now over the Hamas-Israel war.
Of the many complex, painful issues contributing to the tension stemming from the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and the ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza, dividing groups into two basic camps, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, is only making this worse. Call it a category problem.
What do these terms, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, even mean? Are they helpful, or is it time to stop using them altogether?
The fundamental flaw with these terms is that they conflate support for the existence of a country with support for the government or leaders in power. For example, does pro-Israel mean support for the existence of the state of Israel, or for the policies of the current government? They are wildly different things.
Before Oct. 7, there were already massive rallies against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and they have only grown louder. Are the people protesting him anti-Israel? Of course not. Patriotism and partisanship are not always the same thing. The same person who supports the right of Israel to exist – and may even fight for Israel against a group like Hamas – might just as well protest the Likud government, support a two-state solution, and want a cease-fire in Gaza. Read the popular Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and see the diverse views and critical opinions on Israeli policy.
The same is true for the Palestinian cause. Supporting a viable, safe, prosperous Palestinian state is the normative position of most governments around the world, but that does not mean supporting the murderous agenda of Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization in Canada and the US. Palestinians and millions of others who are deeply furious at the Israeli actions in Gaza and Netanyahu’s policies should not necessarily be equated with supporting Hamas and their eliminationist goals. Are you anti-Palestinian if you do not support Hamas? Of course not.
The same is true anywhere. No one asks if you are, say, pro-France, pro-Italy, pro-Canada, or pro-America when they are debating a specific policy. Instead, they ask if you support a particular position or action of the government in power. Reducing this to a conflict about the right to exist as a country – for Israel or Palestine – is a road to endless war. Making this, as it ought to be, about a conflict of policy and leadership – however deadly it is right now – is the path toward resolution.
With the war in Gaza raging, it is understandable that people are being forced to take a side: Are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian? That gives the patina of a firm moral stance, but it plays into the hands of the most radical forces on both sides who strategically want to co-opt the reasonable middle ground for their own purposes.
Among the great propaganda victories of this war are the Hamasification of the Palestinian cause on one side and the Netanyahuization of the Israeli voices on the other (and no, this is not meant to make a false equivalence between the two, but simply to describe the political dynamics).
That’s why you see, say, signs supporting Hamas on campuses and chants that celebrate Oct. 7. That’s why there is a rise in antisemitism or, on the other side, a refusal in some places to acknowledge the deaths and suffering of the people of Gaza.
The category problem supports this dynamic and undermines the rational middle ground where, for generations, there has been a genuine if fruitless effort to find a peaceful two-state solution. It is now parodied as a sinkhole of mushy naivete, offensive bothsidesism, and false equivalencies, and protesters and their slogans shout it down. But it remains the only hope.
There isn’t a lot people can do in the face of such a long-standing bloody conflict – though joining protests is certainly one thing. But perhaps adhering to the middle ground and avoiding the broad categories that help radicals on each side is a small but effective action.
You might think that the one place you’d find this middle ground would be on university campuses, where details, nuance, and debate are supposed to thrive. That’s not happening. On many campuses today, it is now impossible to distinguish between free speech and safe space.
FILE PHOTO: General view shows the United States Supreme Court, in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2024.
Can the government dictate what’s on Facebook?
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday from groups representing major social media platforms which argue that new laws in Florida and Texas that restrict their ability to deplatform users are unconstitutional. It’s a big test for how free speech is interpreted when it comes to private technology companies that have immense reach as platforms for information and debate.
Supporters of the states’ laws originally framed them as measures meant to stop the platforms from unfairly singling out conservatives for censorship – for example when X (then Twitter) booted President Donald Trump for his tweets during January 6.
What do the states’ laws say?
The Florida law prevents social media platforms from banning any candidates for public office, while the Texas one bans removing any content because of a user’s viewpoint. As the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals put it, Florida “prohibits all censorship of some speakers,” while Texas “prohibits some censorship of all speakers.”
Social media platforms say the First Amendment protects them either way, and that they aren't required to transmit everyone’s messages, like a telephone company which is viewed as a public utility. Supporters of the laws say the platforms are essentially a town square now, and the government has an interest in keeping discourse totally open – in other words, more like a phone company than a newspaper.
What does the court think?
The justices seemed broadly skeptical of the Florida and Texas laws during oral arguments. As Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out, the First Amendment doesn’t empower the state to force private companies to platform every viewpoint.
The justices look likely to send the case back down to a lower court for further litigation, which would keep the status quo for now, but if they choose to rule, we could be waiting until June.US President Joe Biden and an American flag
Should the US government be involved with content moderation?
In a decision that sets up a monumental legal battle over the limits of the US government’s power to influence online speech, Louisiana-based District Court Judge Terry Doughty on Tuesday ruled that the Biden administration cannot contact social media platforms for the purpose of moderating content that is otherwise protected by the First Amendment.
What’s the background? The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana last year, which alleged that the Biden administration had coerced platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube into suppressing certain views about public health measures during the pandemic, the 2020 election results, and the economy. The government says it merely made suggestions to blacklist content that it believed would cause public health harm or undermine trust in US elections, and that it didn’t force anyone to do anything.
The philosophical question: Who gets to decide? On the one hand, anyone with eyes can see that social media enables lies and disinformation to proliferate at unprecedented speeds. Enlightenment-era notions of free speech designed for a world of hand-printed pamphlets seem potentially out of date today -- especially when algorithms that tailor content to partisan tastes have turned the “marketplace of ideas” into a warren of self-contained online kiosks.
But the question is whether the government should be allowed to police content that might otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. Supporters of government intervention say that yes, it’s important to quickly stop lies that could, say, harm public health, or undermine the credibility of elections.
Skeptics – at least the good faith ones – see it differently. In a world where facts may be black and white (no, the 2020 election was not “stolen,”), but viewpoints are grayer (experts still disagree about the efficacy of masking and lockdowns during the pandemic), it’s a fatal mistake, they say, for a democracy to allow the government to police online speech like this. After all, one administration’s “fake news” might soon be another’s "fair question."
The partisan dimension: Philosophical matters aside, the case has a partisan coloring. It was brought by GOP states, and the presiding Judge — a Trump appointee — noted in his opinion that the viewpoints targeted for suppression were mostly ones shared by “conservatives.” What's more, it comes amid a broader campaign by the GOP-controlled House to show that various government institutions have been “weaponized” against them.
Still, ordinary Americans’ views on social media regulation don’t follow party lines as much as you might think. A huge study by the Knight Foundation in 2022 found that a majority of Americans think social media companies contribute to societal divisions, and 90% say these platforms spread disinformation. In other words, people don't feel they can trust social media -- a big problem when traditional media are also suffering a long-running crisis of credibility.
But when it comes to solving these problems, things get muddier. Nearly four in five Americans say social media companies can’t be trusted to solve that problem themselves, but 55% say they prefer to keep government out of those decisions entirely.
While there is a hard-core wing of Democrats who fully support government regulation of online content, and a similar, if smaller, wing of Republicans who oppose any controls whatsoever, the Knight study found that roughly half of Americans’ views on these questions don’t correlate neatly with party affiliation — younger and more politically active internet users of all party affiliations, for example, tended to think social media companies should regulate themselves.
What comes next? The Biden administration will appeal the ruling, and Eurasia Group US expert Jon Lieber says it will likely go all the way to the Supreme Court. If so, the case could land in the docket right as the country enters the homestretch of the 2024 election campaigns. In the meantime, the ruling will limit the administration’s ability to police what it sees as disinformation in the run-up to the vote. Depending on who you are, you either think that’s a bad thing or a good thing.
Speaking of which, let us know what you think.Should the government be allowed to pressure social media companies to suppress content? If not, is there another way to deal with the problem of lies or disinformation online? Email us here, and please include your name and location if you’d like us to consider publishing your response in an upcoming edition of the Daily. Thanks!
Undated photo posted by Jack Teixeira\'s mother on Veterans Day Nov 11, 2021 on her Facebook page.
What We're Watching: Pentagon leaker suspect arrested, Gershkovich swap chatter, Uruguay’s free trade ambitions
And the suspected leaker is ...
On Thursday afternoon, the FBI arrested a suspect in the most damaging US intel leak in a decade, identifying him as Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Teixeira was reportedly the leader of an online gaming chat group, where he had been allegedly sharing classified files for three years. If convicted of violating the US Espionage Act, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Teixeira will appear in a Boston court on Friday.
We know that the chat group was made up of mostly male twentysomethings that loved guns, racist online memes, and, of course, video games. We don’t know what motivated the leaks, what other classified material the leaker had, or whether any of the docs were divulged to a foreign intelligence agency.
Arresting a suspect, though, is just the beginning of damage control for the Pentagon and the Biden administration. Although the content of the leaks surprised few within the broader intel community, many might not have realized the extent to which the US spies on its allies.
Uncle Sam obviously would’ve preferred to have intercepted the message this scandal sends to America’s enemies: US intel is not 100% secure.
Russia is maybe considering swap for Evan Gershkovich
A top Russian diplomat suggested Thursday that Moscow could explore a prisoner swap with the US in order to release American journalist Evan Gershkovich, whom Russian authorities jailed earlier this month on espionage charges.
But first, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, the trial against Gershkovich will have to play out in full. That could take as long as a year.
What might Russia want in exchange? Hard to say. Last year, the Kremlin swapped WNBA star Brittney Griner, convicted of a drug offense while traveling in Russia, for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout. At the time, the Kremlin also reportedly sought the release of a Russian assassin from a German prison, but that swap broke down when the Kremlin refused to also release Paul Whelan, an American currently serving an espionage sentence in Russia.
A year from now, the world, and the Ukraine war, might look very different. But expect the Kremlin to throw the book at Gershkovich to maximize their leverage ahead of any talks about his release.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Russia’s prison system, opposition leader Alexei Navalny — currently in solitary confinement — has suffered a fresh health crisis that his spokeswoman says is another attempt to poison him.
For context, see our recent interview with Daniel Roher, director of the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny.
Uruguay’s FTA dream
Uruguay's Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo will soon meet with Chinese officials to take steps toward establishing a Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. Uruguay has wanted an FTA for three decades, and the timing might finally be right as China seeks to increase its influence in South America.
Getting an FTA with China has been a priority for Uruguay’s President Luis Lacalle Pou's administration. The meeting will come on the heels of trade talks between Brazil and China, countries that saw their two-way trade hit a record $171.5 billion in 2022. Uruguay wants in on the action.
China has deepened its trade relationships in Latin America throughout the 21st century, beating out the US as the region's largest trading partner. Beijing benefits politically from these partnerships, gaining votes at the UN and support for Chinese appointees to multinational institutions, as well as the ability to implement technology standards into regional infrastructure.
But not all of Uruguay's neighbors are comfortable with China's swelling influence in the region, or with Uruguay flying solo. Uruguay is facing resistance from other Mercosur countries that favor negotiating regional trade deals as a bloc. Paraguay, which still recognizes Taipei in lieu of the government in Beijing, is leading the pushback – a conflict that could test one of the bloc’s few rules: a restriction on making preferential agreements with third countries.